[REVIEW] Nurturing Nature in Lost Wild: Art on the Edge of the Anthropocene @ Whitney Modern in Los Gatos

text by Chimera Mohammadi

How do we nurture the force that created us? This seemingly paradoxical question defines Lost Wild, the group show on view at the Whitney Modern in Los Gatos. The show grapples with various such paradoxes tethered to our relationship with nature: Keith Petersen’s breathtaking photography of chemical reactions claims organic aesthetics through inorganic means, and Karen Olsen-Dunn’s otherwise conventional landscapes glitch and freeze off the canvas and out of the realm of recognition. Dean Bensen and Demetra Theofanous’s glass leaves and bird nests solidify typically flexible structures into embodied fragility, reminiscent of the environmental precariousness that defines our current global epoch. After luxuriating in these contradictory states, the show sets about to address that core question of nurturing, calling in motifs of youth, restoration, and lushness. Melissa Mohammadi’s sprawling botanical studies and tunnel books house disparate plants, bound together by unlikely familial forces and working together toward healing. Tamera Avery’s tenderly rendered masked subjects are at once children and revolutionaries, often modeled after her own son. Marie Cameron’s paintings cope with climate change through a fantastical fairy tale lens, while Sheila Metcalf Tobin’s burst out of the confines of the canvas in radiant, sun-dappled celebrations of natural nostalgia.

Lost Wild is on view through March 30th at Whitney Modern, 2nd Floor of 24 N Santa Cruz Ave 2nd floor, Los Gatos, CA 95030.

[REVIEW] Queer Routes to Restoration in The Embodied Press @ Kala Art Gallery in Berkeley

text by Chimera Mohammadi

“I lingered in front of the bar and felt eyes search my face.” As the words flit across an uncanny array of printed eyes in Malic Amalya’s short film “Flyhole,” Amalya confines in language the current that unites the work in The Embodied Press: Queer Abstraction and the Artist’s book, a touring exhibition curated by Anthea Black which has just finished its Berkeley stop. The show consists of a glorious collection of Queer aesthetics that question whether they want to be seen and ultimately insist upon it, considering the tenuous relationship between Queerness and observation without compromising the Queer right to be seen. The space where Queerness and spectacle overlap has often held violence: The Embodied Press is a reclamation of that space, thrusting the historic traumas of the Queer community into the spotlight while soothing the resulting discomfort with self-owned Queer spectacle. Lyman Piersma’s delicate, heartrending recordings of life during the AIDS epidemic and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo’s brutally raw love notes and protest poems imbue the space with a revolution-inspiring pathos. Kate Laster’s kaleidoscopic collages suspend themselves in space like bursts of visual jazz, and radiant books of wordless color gradients by Nicholas Shick embody the transcendent euphoria of gender transition. Married couple Miller and Shellabarger’s hazy fields of pastel erotica pepper the space like escape hatches, doors into a welcoming party, while their massive paper dolls cordon off corners for “Flyhole” and Nadine Baritueau’s “Au Revoir” to quietly question the paranoia of being seen and the appeal of disappearance. 

The Embodied Press is on view through February 9th, 2024, at Kala Art Gallery at 2990 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA 94702.

David Hicks Presents Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ Diane Rosenstein Gallery In Los Angeles

Seed, David Hick’s exhibition of ceramics and drawings represents the artist’s first solo show with Diane Rosenstein Gallery. This body of work is closely connected to the landscape surrounding Hicks’ studio and home in Central San Joaquin Valley, a largely agricultural area in California. The artist writes,

While not tethered to a focused realism of nature’s shapes and natural development, my approach is more a loose conversation with natural form; one that addresses my interpretations of growth, irregularity and the movements of nature.

David Hicks’ multifaceted terracotta works ‘grow’ up and around the space in which they are installed. Dionysian ‘Offerings’ take the artist’s maximalist approach to an extreme, depicting heaping plates of vegetal forms—some rising four feet high off the floor—doused in thick glazes, often captured in mid-drip. Plant-like forms also appear as small talismanic objects the artist calls ‘Clippings’. In places, the forms appear more bodily, like heads or organs, offering a reminder that we, too, are a part of the landscape.

Seed is on view by appointment through February 13 @ Diane Rosenstein Gallery 831 N Highland Avenue

Katherina Olschbaur: Dirty Elements @ The University Art Galleries In Irvine

Olschbaur provides a female perspective to a history of canonized male painters, whose work simultaneously inspires her. Although traces of matriarchal order in Western thought typically appear as a mythological apparition, Olschbaur paints a narrative that subverts our expectations under the normative language of patriarchy. For Olschbaur, art historical tropes are appropriated and used like garments, worn then cast aside in a process that is ever changing and moving within each work. In this way, Dirty Elements investigates the power dynamics of patriarchal order and its violent denial of female sexuality. Referencing a wide spectrum of thought, Olschbaur’s practice takes root in mythology, religious and historical paintings, the subcultures of S/M, and film. Embracing Georges Bataille’s concept of the formless, the paintings explore the dirty elements of our carnal nature. In so doing, they feature provocative and erotically charged scenes that are at times humorous and disturbing. Dirty Elements is on view through March 14 at Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, Irvine, California. photographs courtesy of University Art Galleries, UC Irvine © 2020 by Jeff McLane Studio, Inc.

Watch The Music Video For Allah-Las's "In The Air" Off Their New Album "LAHS"

Local California band Allah Las announces their latest album LAHS out October 11 on Mexican Summer and their new video for first single " In The Air ," a tongue in cheek half baked version of Weekend at Bernie's .

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for” the saying goes. But suppose the proverbial harbor is Los Angeles — a place not particularly known for being the origin of adventures. From the Spanish Conquistadors to the countless starry-eyed nobodies hoping to make it big, LA is usually the destination.

So it’s no wonder the Allah Las became fascinated with both the carefree spirit and glitter-in-the-gutter lifestyle of their hometown. After three records mining its lore and lure (from the desert to the sea) they have become global ambassadors of not just a place but a location.

Having taken their compact California on the road across the world (making stops in North, Central, and South America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Russia, East Asia and beyond), they couldn’t help but peek through the other end of the telescope.

On their fourth LP, drummer Matt Correia , bassist Spencer Dunham , and guitarists Miles Michaud and Pedrum Siadatian turn their collective gaze outward and toward the horizon. Simply titled LAHS (a reference to a common misspelling of the band’s name), their forthcoming release on Mexican Summer finds the band turning in their most cohesive and ambitious work yet. LAHS is available for pre-order here

Watch The Music Video For SadGirl's "Chlorine" Off Their New Album "Water"

America is restless. And in the Golden State of California, the veneer of optimism and unlimited opportunity hides a countryside teetering on the edge of the Pacific. The hillside mansions risk burning in the wildfires while the views from ocean front properties remind their owners that one tectonic shift will sink it all.Surely the people who built Los Angeles on the desert landscape were aware of the delicate balance of their surroundings, but hope springs eternal. And indeed, LA became a place of dreams realized, even though Mother Nature and the hands of fate often destroyed those dreams. LA’s SadGirl are acutely aware of that reality, and their analog rock n’ roll has always somehow managed to approximate the relentless optimism of the pioneer spirit, but they’ve also exuded some degree of self-awareness of the anodyne properties of vintage pop. With their new album Water, the Los Angeles trio taps into the romantic and nostalgic spirit of their native city while exuding a time-tested authenticity suggesting that they’ve had a peek behind the curtain of the manicured lawns, glitzy boulevards, and relentless sunshine. SadGirl will be performing tonight, July 11, at the Teregram Ballroom

Mary Heilmann's First Solo Exhibition In Over 20 Years @ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles

‘Memory Remix,’ Mary Heilmann’s first Los Angeles solo exhibition in over 20 years, is a survey of paintings, ceramics, and furniture in which the artist’s unwavering dedication to abstraction merges with sly references to her favorite landscapes, songs, movies, and Mexican weavings. This preeminent American artist is acclaimed for her unique ability to deploy the analytical geometries of Minimalism with the spontaneous freehanded spirit of the Beat Generation from which her generation emerged, and for her weaving of pop culture influences into a wholly original and pioneering oeuvre. Heilmann’s deft handling of paint and spatially dichotomous compositions have exerted a profound influence upon a younger group of artists.

Grounded in the soul of California, Mary Heilmann’s work draws from her memories of the distinctive colors and lines of the West Coast’s landscape and surf culture. Throughout a childhood accompanied by the radio’s ubiquitous soundtrack, Heilmann often watched the ocean tumble to the shore, rode the ‘mountain waves’ at Manhattan Beach, and read Allan Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass,’ which stoked her great admiration for poetry, jazz, and the idea of the Beats. Under these influences and through the deceptively simple means of painting – color, surface, and form – Heilmann physically manifests nostalgic impulses, memories, and allusions to popular culture that remain accessible on both personal and universal levels. In this way, her work transcends the seemingly opaque structures of geometrical abstraction by infusing it with the content of daily life. ‘Memory Remix’ is on view through September 23 at Hauser & Wirth 901 E 3rd Street Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Ranch Of The Rising Sun Presents Sensual Assault In Pioneer Town, California

Curated by Leyden Pavlova, Sensual Assault is a special group exhibition highlighting the physical sensations that dominate in this wild desert space. One feels the wind, the heat, the sun, and an overwhelming visceral sensation of the vastness of geological time. Visually, these forces can be seen in the earth, dry and sharp, worn smooth in places, and the plants that grow imperceptibly only to explode with flowers in the spring. The overwhelming sensations from this landscape provide a context to explore the human body’s violence and vulnerability. Through texture and movement, sensuality and savagery, the human experience is shown through the traces and imprints that people and places leave on each other. Featuring artists Theodore Boyer, Pola Esther, Marie Tomanova, William Kaner, Shig and Ethan Rider. photographs by Marielle Stobie